Safe and reliable operation of a railroad system may be dependent upon the integrity of the rolling mechanisms of the vehicles travelling over the rails. Worn or damaged train wheel bearings may increase the rolling friction of the axle thereby increasing the power required to pull the train. In addition worn or damaged bearings may cause excessive wear to the train axle and, in the case of failure of the bearing, may even cause the axle to lock up, preventing rotation of the wheel and thus resulting in a potential fire hazard due to the heat build up and potential sparking caused by friction of the locked wheel scraping along the rail.
Bearing temperatures may be scanned by sensing a temperature of the wheel bearing indirectly through a bearing box surrounding the wheel bearing on a rail car of a train. For example, infrared radiation (IR) sensors may be mounted along a rail to detect IR energy emitted by an outer wheel bearing of passing rail cars. The IR energy may be indicative of a temperature of the wheel bearing.
However, such a system may be limited to a certain rail car wheel configuration that allows an unimpeded sensing path from the sensor to the bearing box, which may not be achievable for all rail car wheel configurations. Furthermore, inner wheel bearings used on some rail cars and locomotives have proven difficult to scan due to sensing paths being blocked by suspension components and the differences among inner wheel bearing arrangements. In addition, the presence of heat sources near an inner bearing being scanned, such as gear boxes or suspension springs, and the effects of lateral movement of the axle bringing other heat sources into a sensing path, such as during wheel hunting may result in erroneous IR readings for the bearing.
U.S. patent publication number 2006/131,464 discloses a temperature detection system including a sensor comprising an array of infrared sensing elements. Each of the elements may be aimed at a different region of a target area of a rail vehicle undercarriage component to generate respective scanning waveform signature data corresponding to each different region. The sensor may be oriented so that at least one of the elements receives unobstructed infrared emissions from the undercarriage component of a rail vehicle passing the sensor. The system also includes a memory for storing characteristic waveform signature data corresponding to known undercarriage components and a processor for processing the scanning waveform signature data to identify a type of the rail vehicle undercarriage component being scanned and to extract information indicative of a condition of the rail vehicle undercarriage component being identified.
The infrared emission measurements may still not be representative of a condition and a relative hot maximum may not be detected.
Accordingly, an improved system, and method for sensing a temperature of train wheel bearings is desired. The present disclosure is directed, at least in part, to improving or overcoming one or more aspects of the prior art engine component support structures.